As a brief refresher, qualifying is the process of determining whether a lead has the potential to become a customer. This is achieved by asking questions to identify certain “buying” characteristics in a lead (e.g., budget, timeline, pain point).
There are multiple scenarios where you might be going into a sales encounter with pre-qualified info:
- Your marketing system captured some info from the customer on a landing page.
- Your SDR qualified for you and took notes on the appointment-setting call.
- You already talked to one decision maker and now you’re talking to the other.
- You did your own research before the call.
- You qualified at the beginning of a long demo/pitch and need to re-qualify before asking for the sale.
In these cases, you’ll always want to re-qualify.
In other words, you don’t want to take the pre-qualified info at face value. Things may have changed. The prospect could have inputted false info into the form on the landing page. Your SDR may have misunderstood the prospect. One DM could have a different view of things than a different DM. A prospect could change their qualifying answers during the course of a demo/pitch. For these reasons, you want to make sure and confirm any pre-qualified info you already have—I call this re-qualifying.
Now, there’s a right way and a wrong way to re-qualify. When listening to my reps, I notice one bad habit most often, and that’s the tendency to ask leading questions (i.e., assuming the answer within the question).
For example, “Bob, you wanted to get this started today, right?” That’s a leading question. That’s the wrong way to re-qualify.
Qualifying should never feel like an interrogation (whether it’s pre-qualifying, re-qualifying, or any other type of qualifying). You shouldn’t be asking leading questions like your customer is on the witness stand. This makes it obvious to the customer that you’re trying to get them to go in a certain direction, which causes the encounter to feel forced and inauthentic.
Instead, ask open-ended questions.
For example, “Bob, when did you want to get this started?”
Notice the subtle difference between those two questions. The first (the wrong way) is a “yes” or “no” question that assumes the answer. The second (the right way) is an open-ended question that invites Bob to give a more detailed answer.
Even if you think you already know the answer, don’t let the customer know that.
It’s a common expression in product management that users will often “take the path of least resistance.” It’s the same for your customers. If you offer up an easy answer to a leading question, they’re just going to say, “Yea, that sounds right.”
Instead, an open-ended question requires some thought. “Yes” and “no” aren’t options. There has to be more specificity and explanation in response to an open-ended question.
This gives your customer an opportunity to update you with any new information. It also gives you the chance to confirm information that you already know.
Oftentimes I’ll find that my customers will change their answers in the time between pre-qualifying and re-qualifying. This tells me that they’re not sure and it might be an area where I need to dig in.
All in all, this topic is fairly deep in the treasure chest of sales knowledge. But if you’re already a master qualifier, re-qualifying is an area where you can take your qualifying game to the next level.